Forensic anthropology is a form of anthropology that can be described as the study of humans. These types of anthropologists focus mainly on identifying and constructing a biological profile based off of old/ancient remains. They do this by estimating age, sex, body type, and ancestry as well as identifying certain characteristics like diseases and injuries that could help in identifying the cause of death. To determine these things they start off by asking themselves a number of questions such as whether or not the fossil is bone, whether or not the remains are from a human, what the bones represent, ow old the remains are etc.
Forensic scientists can accurately and precisely determine racial features by analyzing skeletal remains because they use different types of digital processing such as skeletal morphology, they look at phenotypic traits of individuals, and they look at DNA of individuals as well as their skull shapes. In the article Understanding race and human variation Sauer (1992) argued that American forensic anthropologists were good at what they did because of a concordance between social race and skeletal morphology in American whites and blacks.
This vidence was based on papers from Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology and others using craniometrics and molecular data to show strong geographic pattering of human variation despite overlap in their distribution (Sauer, p 70). Sauer also argued that white humans have different discrete entities that distinguish one from another sometimes ones that are not that noticeable. He said this based on the fact that forensic anthropologists were good at identifying races and skeletal biology, more specifically, cranial morphology in black as well as white Americans.
What Sauer used to analyze skeletal remains to figure out their ancestral background was with a method called the craniometrics system. This system was efficient to use because one can analyze skeletal remains using several statistical measurements/methods that allow for less problems when grouping, it has also found significant face variation within the different ethnic groups and their genetic relationships have shown that animals have some of the same ancestral traits as humans do.
These craniometrics traits have been shown to be usual in assessing ancestral and reconstructing population history. Lewontin (1972) used this method to estimate that only 85% of human differences are found within populations, 8% is found in society’s that have the same race or are from the same regional group, and 6% is found in races or regions. He found this evidence by analyzing each of the genetic markers independently but did not look to know that some markets are significantly related to others and solely distributed among the different groups (Lewontin, p 72).
Although the craniometrics system seemed to work pretty well for the most part in identifying the races of the ancestral skeletal remains, as a ackup method to separate blacks and white, a six way DFA was used on six of Howells European and Sub-Saraharan American samples. This method helped classify 82% of them correctly into their own group and 98% of them into a group from the same continent. Sauer notes that the main reason for biological differences should be familiar is because American blacks and whites comes from different continents (1992, p 73).
Given the fact that there are a large number of biological races in the world and that there are many populations with unique histories we use the craniometrics system help aid and provide s with the most accurate information when analyzing ancient skeletal remains. Given the association of skin colour and latitude, it becomes fairly easy to separate people from widely different geographic regions into different groups based on skin colour.
The question of biological race that helps to describe human biological variation has had a long debate in physical anthropology. Liberman et al. (2003) argued that there is much debate over the degree to which supports the idea of race concept within the field of physical anthropology has changed over time (Liberman t al. p 16). The term “race” is not only common but it has been used to refer to the aspects of both biological and cultural variation. However it is not always the best way to describe or analyze the human biological variation.
In order to determine hes biologi using several models of reflectance spectrophotometers which are devices that measures the amount of light at a given wavelength that is reflected back off a person’s skin and the lighter person the greater amount reflected light they will have. Most studies rely on the filter number 609 of the E. E. L eflectometer to determine different skin colours (Relethford, p 17). Population geneticists tend to use the degree of variation among populations using a measure known as Wright’s FST.
FST can be estimated from phenotypic traits given heritability estimates (Relethford et al. p, 17). Regardless of whether one considers the FST values from genetic markers useful or not, when it comes to assessing the race concept, these results show that skin colour, which is a phenotypic trait actually does have an atypical pattern of among-group diversities. Not all phenotypic traits show the extreme global differentiation and nvironmental correlation of skin colour however when looking at an individual’s skin colour traits it becomes easy in identifying their ancestral background.
Mitchell (2013) notes that the development of molecular tools for the extraction and analysis or DNA from the remains of ancient organisms have revolution a range of different disciplines as a multitude of human evolution, bioarcheology, epidemiology, microbiology, taxonomy, and population genetics. Based on evidence of Mitchell extracting DNA from ancient material/skeletal remains and looking and comparing ace anthropologists have measures skin colour relationships between modern and ancient humans (Mitchell p, 12).
Most of the observable phenotypic traits can be studied and looked at by analyzing variation within ancient nuDNA genes (this method was recently introduced by Lalueza-Fox). Mitchell notes that by looking at pigmentation, including things such as skin, eyes, and hair colour, it’s one of the most variable human phenotypic traits to have when identifying skeletal remains (2013, p 14). Although normal pigmentation variation in humans has not yet been fully taught there are however many other ays to analyze skeletal remains to figure out someone’s ancestral background.
Another method Mitchell notes in his article is by looking at the genetic structure of human skulls. Mitchell would find skulls either ancient or modern and compare them to other skulls that were ancient or modern. For example, if he found a skull in a region that was known to populate mostly African Americans he would take that skull into the lab and compare it with other skulls that were found in that region to help figure out what the ancestral background of that skull is (2013, p 15).
This method proved to be very useful and accurate when it came to analysing and categorizing the skulls and ended up being another method that forensic scientist would use when analyzing skeletal remains. All in all most of these methods as shown in this essay are very accurate and reliable when it comes to analyzing skeletal remains and determining their ancestral background. However as with every good idea there are always a couple of flaws and even though these methods are used highly by forensic anthropologists there are other methods that they use as backup just in case.
With that being said forensic scientist can accurately and precisely determine racial features by analyzing skeletal remains because they use different types of digital processing such as skeletal morphology and the craniometrics system, they look at phenotypic traits such as an individual skin colour, and they look at DNA of individuals as well as their head shapes and compare them to other ancestral remains either ancient or modern and compare them to other skulls that were found in that same region or continent to help them determine the ancestral background of the skeletal remains that’s they found.
